Aviation is under significant pressure to find enough licensed/qualified personnel. Pilots, engineers, ATC controllers, Aviation managers are in high demand. Select one specific professional group in your aviation business and research and propose a model how you would address and solve the people shortfall in the coming 5 years.
The aviation business in the United Arabs Emirates has been facing a significant shortfall of aviation managers. Considering the key roles of aviation managers in any aviation business, there is much pressure to find enough licensed managers to ensure smooth flow of activities in the business. This essay aims to develop a model that would address and solve the aviation managers’ shortfall in the aviation business in the coming five years, by describing the activities and strategies that the organization could apply towards this goal. This essay begins by explaining the first step that could be taken towards this objective, which is, analyzing the current requirement of aviation managers, before discussing the management training, then it highlights the ways through which the organization could source for licensed aviation managers, after which the need and ways through which the company could attract and retain licensed aviation managers are discussed before finally suggesting an alternative method through which the business may help create its own managers to curb the shortfall.
The global aircraft industry encompasses a large network of companies working either as large international conglomerates or as individual national and regional organizations, as viewed by Dingle & Tooley, (2013). Considering the wide scope of aviation business, it is evident that aviation management is of critical importance in the business. An aviation manager is employed by the airport to oversee compliance with local. State and federal rules and regulations, ensuring there are smooth, safe and efficient operations within the airport and its departments through overseeing the processes of hiring and management of the airport and its departments.
An appropriate model to address and solve the manager’s shortfall in the aviation business begins with understanding the roles and requirement of aviation managers in the business. The various departments within the business should be identified, and the personnel requirement per department determined. The airport departments include infrastructure maintenance and development department, ground handling department, quality assurance department and aviation services and business development department. The starting point of addressing the aviation managers personnel shortfall in the business would be to analyze the various airport departments considering the number of aviation managers currently available per department. Through considering the services offered per department, managers gap could be identified. After knowing the number of managers that each department is short of, then the next step could be taken towards addressing and solving this shortfall.
Completing the first step of determining the number of managers requirements per department and identifying the existing manager’s parity, then the next step would be to look for sources from which these people could be obtained. The aircraft authority advertises the vacancies in the requirement of aviation managers in the various departments, both from the local and international markets, clearly stating the qualifications and experiences needed. Applications are then received from the potential employees. Interviews carried out and shortlisting is done on the basis of qualification and experience. In cases where the local market cannot provide enough personnel with the desired qualifications to fill the vacant positions, international applications could be considered, though the cost of hiring internationally could be slightly higher than that of local hiring. The selected persons should be accredited by the Professional Development Program, PDP that works to provide certification for business aviation managers.
According to Castro (2011), management training refers to the training that a corporate aviation manager must undergo to maintain management skills and keep up with state of the art management. This training is provided to those who are concerned with effective management and efficient operation of corporate flight departments.
After the acquisition of enough personnel, the authority then organizes management training. This training helps to ensure that the acquired certified personnel are equipped with the necessary skills to carry out their specific job functions. The airport’s authority should provide training to the managers acquired in accordance with Federal Aviation Administration, FAA guidelines. FAA outlines many of the regulatory training requirements for pilots, mechanics and other crew members in the Federal Aviation Regulations Aeronautical Information Manual, as indicated in Cannon & Richey, (2011). These requirements are part of FAA roles in regulating civil aviation and promoting safety. These training requirements are provided in the form of regulations that are binding to all certified personnel. The aviation managers are trained to acquire such skills as the ability to manage the financial aspects of company assets as well as motivating and leading flight department personnel, under the FAA guidelines.
Training is not only aimed at the newly acquired managers, but it should also be provided to the existing managers as a means of retaining them in the company. Through training, an employee’s job satisfaction is enhanced as he acquires more skills to carry out his or her job responsibilities as well as strengthening his or her current skills with regards to the specific job. Moreover, training could also be a basis for job promotion thus maintaining the employees.
Employee attraction and retention
Employee retention helps to ensure long-term human resource availability in the company. Considering the shortfall of aviation managers, methods and policies should be designed by the specific airline companies to retain their valuable managers after the tiresome and demanding acquisition process.
Some of the methods through which aviation managers could be retained in the company may include: establishing companywide flight and duty guidelines, maintaining flexibility, using supplement staffing, providing loss of license coverage, providing employee incentives, providing management seminars, performance appraisals and offering tangible and well-defined rewards, as viewed from the website (www.nbaa.org).
Management duty guidelines assist the aviation managers in carrying out their respective roles within the company. These guidelines help prevent work clashes by specifically defining the job descriptions and requirements as well as the boundaries of operations of the various managers. These guidelines also highlight the Federal Aviation Regulations in relation to the job descriptions and specify the start and end of duty times. Efficient and effective performance of the aviation managers will help in ensuring the optimum efficiency of flight crews and enhancing the safety of flight, which is the main objective of aviation management (Cannon & Richey, 2011).
Properly specified duty guidelines help avoid work dilemmas as well as reducing work clashes or conflicts with the chief authorities that may lead to the manager opting to quit or change his or her job.
Workforce flexibility is another method that could be used to ensure employee retention in the airline industry. Belobaba, Odoni & Barnhart highlighted that, in a highly interdependent and service-intensive industry such as airline, flexibility among employees doing different jobs, including managers, is critical. Flexible job boundaries between the aviation managers help to support high levels of retention coordination. Besides employee retention, flexible job boundaries create more opportunities for communication across the functional boundaries, thereby enabling for development of higher degrees of a shared goal, shared knowledge and work respect, (Belobaba, Odoni & Barnhart, 2016). Working flexibility further allows the managers to balance between their work, life and families. This further enhances employee satisfaction thus retention.
Moreover, using supplement staffing could also help the company ensure long-term human resource availability and sufficiency in the organization. Supplement staffing helps carter for unexpected human resource need in an organization. Moreover, during the period that these people act as supplement staffs, they are equipped with the necessary experience to take up the management positions when the need arises. The aviation business can do this by offering internship opportunities to students pursuing aviation management courses. This further helps to build a strong base of potential mangers for the company thus ensuring continuous sufficiency of aviation managers in the company. Additionally, the company could facilitate training of its employees in management skills as a way of creating supplement staffs for management activities.
The company could organize for management seminars in which academic professors with management degrees provide some short courses training for the managers. Various knowledge fields and skills could be enhanced by the management team. These vary from human resource management, emergency planning, safety management systems, flight operations manuals, to corporate aviation management. Moreover, numerous seminars should be held specifically designed to provide PDP credits for attendees, (Stearns, 2010).
In the market of few aviation managers and stiff competition for the few managers available by the numerous aviation organizations, the company should try as much as possible to retain its acquired aviation managers for as long as possible. Among the numerous methods of attracting and retaining this scarce resource of aviation managers, the aviation organization could ensure that it offers tangible and well-defined rewards for its managers and other employees. Rewards, as defined by Lasrado & Pereira, (2018), refer to the recognition facilitation that exists in the organization, and may be handled through a well- defined reward scheme to include both tangible and non-tangible benefits. This could be ensured through basing the monetary benefits on the value of the suggestion and ensuring fair rewards as well as fair and transparent rewarding procedures. This would create the desire in the aviation management students to join the specific organization, and once there, stay.
This could best be attained through the total reward approach. As emphasized by Armstrong & Murlish (2007), developing a total reward approach is similar to reward strategy development. The organization has to ensure it establishes a clear vision and set of integrated values that should be applied and enacted, not just the application of well-defined techniques. This could be undertaken by communicating the values, giving the employees a voice, setting up the improved performance management process, instituting formal recognition schemes and taking steps to improve work-life balance, as further explained by Armstrong & Murlish.
Besides employee retention, the use of a total reward approach has numerous benefits that include greater motivation and commitment of workers, enhanced employment relationships, increased people engagement that portrays a strong message to the workers about the organization and its values, flexibility and meeting individual needs, and attracting more people to work in the company.
Another employee retention method that could ensure that the organization has enough aviation managers for the next five years is by providing incentives to the managers. An incentive system is the sum of all deliberately arranged labour conditions which can either intensify certain behaviour patterns or reduce the probability of occurrence of certain patterns, according to Haupt, (2011). An incentive system entails time specific incentive plans that focus individually on employees and are often tied to material and immaterial remuneration.
Towards attaining the objectives of ensuring longtime availability of employees, the organization could direct its incentives towards personnel attraction, motivation and retention of the personnel. Both intrinsic and extrinsic incentives could be provided. Intrinsic incentives come directly from the activity of the manager’s task itself, giving satisfaction or dissatisfaction to the individual. They create internalized standards within the individual so as to be rewarded for the success internally by him or herself, for instance through self-actualization. Extrinsic incentives, on the other hand, are less job-dependent and related to working conditions. They are aimed towards satisfying such needs as income, extra benefits, job security, career and status. Through good working conditions managers will be attracted to work more and more in the organization thus long-term management human resource availability. Such incentives as health insurance covers, accident and related injuries covers and retirement benefits plans could help motivate managers to stay in the company. Moreover, holiday treaties could also help managers relax from the tiresome and stressful busy work schedules thus enhance their performances as well as contributing towards employee retention.
Finally, another method that could be used to ensure employee satisfaction thus retention is performance appraisal. Performance appraisal could form the basis of incentives provision. However, the primary objective of performance appraisal program is to ensure the maximum utilization of employee’s skills, knowledge and interests. Performance appraisal or other performance review contribute towards employee job satisfaction through identifying the areas where further training or seminars should be provided to ensure that the employees are more experienced in their duty areas and thus effective performance, as viewed in Arthur, (2008). Proper planning is necessary to be undertaking the performance appraisal program since a poorly planned or subjectively implemented system, or the absence of an appraisal system altogether can greatly weaken an organization and its ability to perform effectively.
On the other hand, Arthur further adds that effective performance appraisal systems create additional employee-employee benefits such as strengthening the working relationship between managers and their employers, developing a mutual understanding between managers and their employers, encouraging open expression by employees concerning performance related issues, and identification of mismatches in hiring.
The company could offer courses on aviation management to ensure enough supply of aviation managers for the company. The organization will need to hire professionals who have the necessary knowledge and skills on the various aspects of aviation management to train and equip its aviation management students with these skills. These people could then be directly employed by the organization to meet its human resource requirement. Despite being an expensive method, it promises long-term results.
In addition, the organization could offer subsidies for aviation management students who show the interest in working in the organization after which retention methods would be applied to ensure that these people stay in the organization. Educational subsidies and scholarships could create an effective ground for acquiring aviation management skills that the organization requires.
Conclusion
Considering the importance of managers in any business organization, aviation business should develop strategies towards ensuring that it acquires accredited aviation managers. After the successful acquisition, the main task that would ensure long-term availability of these managers in the organization would be retention tactics. These would include seminars, incentives, well-defined rewards, supplement staffing, providing clear duty guidelines. However, the organization should continually engage in research to identify more customer retention tactics as the world devolves and develops more and more. For aviation businesses that have wider financial bases, starting aviation management training programs for potential aviation managers, students, could be considered. Or the organization could provide scholarships for studying aviation management courses. Therefore, aviation business should develop employee retention strategies to ensure long-term employees availability towards curbing the problem of a shortfall of aviation managers in the business.
References
Armstrong, M. & Murlish, H. (2007), Reward management: a handbook of remuneration strategy and practice. London, Kogan Page.
Arthur, D. (2008), Performance appraisals: strategies for success. New York, American Management Association.
Belobaba, P., Odoni, A.R., & Barnhart, C. (2016), The global airline industry. John Wiley & Sons.
Cannon, J.R., & Richey, F.D. (2011), Practical Applications in Business Aviation Management. Government Institutes.
Castro, R. (2011), Corporate aviation management. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press.
Dingle, L., & Tooley, M.H. (2013), Aircraft Engineering Principles. 2nd Edition. Routledge.
Haupt, S. (2011), Design, Development and Implementation of an Incentive System for Local Employees in Subsidiaries of Western Companies in China. Diplom.de. Available at https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201608054570. (Accessed on 8th June 2018)
Lasrado, F. & Pereira, V. (2018), Achieving sustainable business excellence the role of human capital. Cham, Palgrave Macmillan.
NBAA.org, (2017), Available at www.nbaa.org/prodev/workforce/5-employe-retention-strategies.php. (Accessed on 8th June 2018).
Stearns, J. (2010), Observations and Experiences with Leadership in Management: 42 years with Pan American World Airways. Xlibris Corporation.
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